


Staring into the muzzle blast

by ElisAttack



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Space, BAMF Stiles, Discrimination, M/M, Military, Protective Stiles, Science Fiction, Slow Build, Space Opera, The Expanse AU, but they have the solar system, humanity doesn't have the stars, soldier Stiles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-23 00:43:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7459929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElisAttack/pseuds/ElisAttack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The hairs rise on the back of Stiles' neck when he glances out the porthole and gets a real close look at the asteroid’s surface.  It’s covered in cable lines and electronics, too small and sparse to be seen from anywhere but the surface.  They flow towards a series of boulders and what appears to be a heavyweight airlock.  Someone built a base here and nobody knew about it.  Not Earth, not Mars, not the Belt.</p><p>Stiles grips his rifle tighter."  </p><p>Or the one where Stiles is an Earther marine, sent to the Belt to help investigate a distress beacon.  What he finds brings to light a conspiracy that has the power to shake the Solar System to its very core, and change everything he’s ever known.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This started off an a prompt on Tumblr from trenonny, which I'm not going to show, because spoilers, but it kinda got away from me. 
> 
> It ended up being heavily inspired by The Expanse Series. It doesn't follow the same plot as the books, but it is influenced by the gritty blue collar sci-fi world it takes place in, and many locations/tech are the same. You don't have to read the series to understand this.
> 
> Just fyi, The Expanse is known for being very sciency and I tried to incorporate that as well as I could. Artificial gravity doesn't exist, instead thrust/spin gravity take its place. I try to explain what each is (while trying to avoid dryness) so you can better picture the world. If you still don't understand, don't be afraid to drop me a message.

 

Luna base is a shithole.  An absolute, irredeemable shithole.  Beside him, the air recycler rumbles as he tries to slurp down his bowl of noodles.  There are little bits of an unidentifiable fungus floating around in the brown broth, but that’s not what’s turning Stiles off—he’s used to the fungus, it’s cheaper than beef and a good source of protein—rather it’s the smell of rotting meat coming from the vent that eventually has Stiles putting down his chopsticks.

It’s most likely a dead rat, ignored by the cleaners.  They’re infamous for overlooking things they don’t want to deal with.  Going by the smell, the animal must be a few weeks gone.  It will have to be scraped off the vent, a job that apparently requires too much effort by the people paid to do it.  

With his appetite completely gone, Stiles rises to his feet.  The rainbow umbrella shading him from the artificial sun, doesn’t match his sour mood.  The blue sky with happy little clouds floating around, covered in huge swathes of dead pixels, matches it just fine.  

He got the call this morning.  Luna may be a shithole, but compared to Ceres, it’s paradise.  He’s heard _stories_ about Ceres, stories that are probably all true.  

Bribery and corruption run rampant, and to make it past thirty, people either have to be rich, or scary, or both.  The poor and weak have to pay heavy taxes to the gangs that protect them, while somehow also paying for the air they breathe.  There’s no free oxygen on Ceres, unlike Luna.  Oxygen isn’t a basic human right according to the Belt, it’s just another commodity people have to dole out credits for.  

Therein lie the stories.  His old XO knew a guy whose whole family had their oxygen shut off in the middle of the night because of a clerical error.  Seven people, women and children included, all dead because some clerk added their contract to the wrong pile.

And now, Stiles is being transferred to Ceres.  

He doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve this.  Actually, scratch that, he knows all too well.  

Once upon a time, Stiles was a little brat living in secret on Earth.  He was the singular, yet very illegal child of Claudia and John Stilinski.  Illegal, because at the time of his birth, there were close to thirty billion people living on Earth.  Only family co-ops consisting of nine or more adults were allowed to have a child, yet his parents wanted one anyway.  His mom is stubborn like that—it’s where he gets it from.  

He was applying for university when his paperwork was discovered to be fabricated, and instead was drafted into the navy at eighteen.  After all, illegal aliens must make themselves useful somehow.  How Stiles is considered an illegal alien simply by existing, still baffles him.

Borders don’t exist on Earth anymore.  At least that’s what everyone says.  Stiles doesn’t agree, borders don’t have to be physical barriers to effectively tear families apart, while ruining hopes and dreams.

He’s is in his late twenties and hasn’t seen his parents in the flesh since he was eighteen.  Now he’s only going to get further away from them.  Stiles still hasn’t told his mom, he knows the news is going to kill her.  

He can’t help the bitterness that surges and leaves him cold.  He never wanted to be in the navy, but that choice was taken from him.  As all choices often are.

He has a day to get his affairs in order before he’s shipped off into the Belt.  Ceres is a dwarf planet located somewhere between Mars and Jupiter, but it’s still considered an outer planet, and he knows what everyone says about the outer planets.  Once there, it’s nigh impossible to leave.  

Stiles takes a good, long look around the shithole that is Luna base.  It’s probably the last time he’ll see it in all its crappy gloriousness.

***

“Fucking crawler.”  Stiles hears someone whisper as he boards the transport ship, all his belonging in a pack on his back.  Stiles brushes off the slur like a champ.  He’s been called worse things in his life, ‘crawler’ doesn’t even compare.  He looks at his boarding pass and pushes through the growing crowd, trying to find his room.  

He swears, every single year, these ships just get more and more crowded.  Stiles doesn’t know why people would want to live in the outer planets.  Except for the jobs.  Okay, maybe he does understand.  Ice hauling in Saturn’s rings is a growing enterprise, what with billions of people in need of a constant supply of water.

“Hey there,” a man with an adorably crooked jaw greets when Stiles finally finds his room, his hand outstretched to shake, “Looks like you’ll be my bunk mate.”

Stiles shakes the hand offered.  “Looks that way.  I’m Stiles.”  

“Scott.”  The man says in return, showing Stiles around their cupboard-like space.  It’s so small, they’ll be living in each other's pockets.  Stiles expresses this sentiment to Scott and he laughs, “This is going to be a long three days for you.”

Stiles snorts and throws his bag up on the top bunk, noticing Scott’s already taken the bottom one.  That’s what he gets for being late.

“You Martian?”  Stiles asks, tucking his pack under his pillow before climbing up on the bunk and settling in.  He’s had too many fellow soldiers try to rob him of his things to not sleep like that.

Scott nods, surprised.  “How’d you know?”

“Your accent.”  Stiles pauses, tapping his finger slowly against his bottom lip.  “Let me guess, Olympus Mons city?”

Scott grins widely, teeth glowing in the dim fluorescent light.  “You _must_ know me, there’s no way you could have figured that out so quickly.”

“I wanted to be a linguist before I got drafted.”  Stiles admits, fingers tugging on his hoodie string, chewed to within an inch of its life by his nervous mouth.

Scott stares at him for a moment before it clicks, and Stiles waits for the inevitable fallout, for Scott to wipe the hand that he shook off on his clothes.  That’s what he gets for sharing, for trying to make friends.  But instead of the expected disgust, sadness sweeps over Scott’s features.  “That sucks, man.”

Stiles shrugs, even as relief sweeps through his body.  “Yeah, well, what’s done is done.”  He scrubs at the back of his head, hoping to change the subject.  “At least we’ll be leaving Luna’s sad excuse for gravity behind,”  he says optimistically.

“Oh man, spin gravity is the actual worst.”  Scott agrees.  “I’d rather be on a ship during heavy burn then have to go to Luna’s lower levels again.  I’d take twenty gs, strapped into a crash couch while tranquilized out of my mind for an hour, than have to feel perpetually nauseous.”  

Stiles agrees, Luna’s gravity never felt right to him.  After growing up on Earth, acclimatized to one g of pressure at any given time, Luna was awful.  

Once, his parents took him to a carnival on Earth.  There was a ride where the room would spin so fast people would stick to the walls, that’s how Luna base works.  Except instead of the walls, people stick to the floors.  And just like the aftermath of that ride, one of his ears felt like it was perpetually popped, and he was always slightly nauseous at the day’s end.

Static crackles through the ship’s speakers.  The captain announces takeoff in an hour, warning passengers that he’s going to burn the fusion drive, constantly coasting at what he calls a comfortable two gs.  Stiles can’t help but think their captain is deranged.  One g on Earth is enough—gravity is tough enough on his innate clumsiness—Stiles imagines that trying to walk around in a two g environment will require more muscles than he is currently in possession of.  He just hopes there are no Belters on the ship, after growing up in low gravity settlements, they can’t even spend long periods of time on Earth without feeling sick.  Two gs would be hell on them.

Scott sighs unhappily.  “The CO probably convinced him to hurry.”

Stiles frowns.  “Why?  Ceres isn’t going anywhere.”

Scott tilts his head to the side, confused.  “Don’t you know about our mission parameters?”

“Scott, no one ever tells me anything, I’m not exactly popular with COs, they’re all so snooty, sticking up their noses at people like me.”  His Luna CO used to call him an alien to his face, not even bothering to dress it up prettily.  Earth and all its citizens are not too fond of illegal children who didn’t even get a choice on whether to be born or not.  

“At least you know that we’re going to Ceres.”  Scott reassures him weakly.  It doesn’t help.

Stiles nods.  “I just don’t know what we’ll be doing there, I figured we were being stationed, waiting for eventual orders.”

“It’s a protection mission,”  Scott explains, “Some scientists found a really old asteroid that’s been giving off weird signals.  We’ll be there to keep them safe in case something goes wrong.”

“This really old asteroid, what do they think is on it?”

Scott shrugs.  “If they know, they haven’t told anyone.  Honestly, I don’t even know why they need us, it’s not like they’re going to find a brand new, threatening lifeform.  It’s probably just an old transmitter from a wrecked ship.”  He claps Stiles on the shoulder and disappears, climbing into his lower bunk.

Stiles’ brows dip, he’s feeling too tired to explain to Scott that if it was a transmitter, they would already know.  Everything has its own signal, and it’s easy to tell sources apart.  If this signal requires a team of scientists and naval officers to physically investigate, it means it’s something big and dangerous.  A bead of sweat runs down the back of his neck.  He has a bad feeling about this one.  

Stiles figures he has at least half an hour before takeoff.  He pulls out his hand terminal and turns on his communicator.  Flipping through the screens, he makes a call.  After a while, the call connects and a woman’s face appears on the small display.  Her eyes are tired, loving, and full of so much guilt as she smiles at him.  The delay is only a second, but once he goes out into the Belt, it will take a few hours for messages to reach Earth.  He won’t be able to have real time conversations then—light can only move so fast.  

“Hey, mom.”  Stiles greets.

***

The moment the ship docks on Ceres, Stiles feels like he’s floating.  The gravity is so low, it’s practically nonexistent.

“Whoa, trippy,”  Scott says from beside him, hand resting against the side of the ship as he gets his bearings.  Over the past five days they’ve gotten to know each other very well.  Stiles can say with certainty, Scott is the least prejudiced soldier he’s ever met.  He had a few friends before in training camp, but once they inevitably discovered his birth status, they distanced themselves from him.  

Illegal children have certain stereotypes surrounding them, stereotypes that are general, and generally untrue.  Just because he was born naturally, without any genetic modification, doesn’t mean he’s prone to contracting and spreading disease.  People are afraid to touch him, and it makes him feel awful, especially when friends pull away.  

Scott though, has a tendency to touch him too much, and it’s throwing Stiles off.

Scott throws his arm around Stiles’ shoulder, and drapes himself all along Stiles’ back.  “Carry me, bro,”  he says enthusiastically.

Stiles sighs the sigh of a man who has spent the last few days doing exactly that.  He bends his knees, and Scott hops onto his back, yee-hawing like a cowboy on a prized stallion.  He just hopes their CO doesn’t catch sight of them, he has no intention of getting written up.  Stiles grips the back of Scott’s knees and runs off the ship, Scott giggling like a maniac in his ear.

“Scott?”  A distinctly feminine voice calls out to them.  Stiles shudders to a halt.

The voice belongs to a tall woman in a Belt navy uniform, hair pulled up in a tight bun.  She stands at attention by the entry gate, hands behind her back.  Scott sheepishly slides off his back, discreetly fixing Stiles’ shirt where it untucked from his pants.

The woman walks closer and Scott quickly whispers in his ear,  “That’s our XO for the mission.”

“Allison Argent,”  the woman offers, sticking her hand out for Stiles to shake.  Stiles reluctantly takes it, shaking it for one second before quickly letting it go.  He’s sick and tired of his XOs smiling at him, only to find out his name and status, and rejecting him.

“Stiles Stilinski,”  he says, but instead of pulling away, Argent seems to smile even wider.

“I read your file, ensign Stilinski, it’s impressive, commendable even, what you’ve accomplished.  Especially regarding the incident in Deimos’ orbit.  I’m surprised you haven’t been promoted to lieutenant already.”

Stiles scoffs.  “To be frank, Ma’am, you know very well why I haven’t been promoted.”

She brushes off his disrespectful tone like she doesn’t even care.  “Please, call me Allison, my mother is ‘Ma’am,’”  she says, her dimples deepening, “And don’t you worry about paltry things like birth status.  In the outer planets, everyone is equal.  Things are very different than where you’re from.”

Stiles raises his brow in surprise.

“Isn’t she awesome?”  Scott raves excitedly after Allison walks away to greet another member of her team.

“She’s something alright,”  Stiles says, looking around the docking area at the wide variety of people walking around and going about their business.  Ceres may not be as bad as he thought it would be.

***

Two of the three other soldiers sent on the mission with them are Belters like Allison.  People who’ve grown up in low g, so their body shows it.  A childhood in the Belt means longer limbs and taller, skinnier bodies.  Erica Reyes and Isaac Lahey are two such Belters.  

Lahey towers over Stiles like a giant, hair a ring of golden curls around his head.  He looks like an angel, but acts like the exact opposite.  He wears a permanent smirk, and when Allison introduces Stiles as an Earther, he chuckles a little and makes an unidentifiable rude gesture.  Reyes is snark personified.  She takes one long look at Stiles from toe to hair, smirks lecherously, and turns back to her Martian companion—the big and bulky Vernon Boyd, who sits to the side and basically ignores Stiles and Scott.

Stiles settles in for the ride to the base.  When Reyes and Lahey were introduced to Stiles, they weren’t told about his birth status before they started looking at him funny.  They dislike all Earthers the same, prejudices fostered for reasonable reasons.  Earth was never very forthcoming with sending aid to the Belt, going back on promises made years ago.  Those broken promises still don’t sit right with some Belters.  

It’s reassuring, knowing that most Belters are like him—people born naturally, without any genetic modification, as well as people who have been scorned by Earth.  He imagines that should make him fit right in on Ceres.

Allison chats with Scott as she drives the cart, and he hangs on to every word she says.  They’ve obviously met before, and it’s apparent to everyone present, Allison included, that Scott has a big honking crush on her.  She seems to ignore it, probably because she holds a position of power over him as his XO.  It wouldn’t be appropriate for them to be in a relationship.  No matter how much she seems to want to, going by how bright her smile is, and the slight flush on her cheeks.

The marketplace they drive through is crowded, full of Belters yelling out a crude mixing of English, Spanish and what appears to be Mandarin.  The crowd ebbs and flows with movement.  If there’s one thing Stiles has noticed about Belters when they talk, it’s that they do it with their hands.  Stiles figures the emphasis on body language has to do with their professions.  Belters work in the vacuum of space—mining asteroids for minerals, and hauling ice from Saturn’s rings.  They have to be able to effectively communicate with each other using signals that can be discerned though heavy space suits.  Hence the flailing that seems very out of place in a crowded market.

The base sits on the outskirts of the market, behind meters high wired fence, topped off by barbed wire, and constantly shifting cameras.  Military personnel stop the cart, and check every single ID, even Allison’s.  Whatever’s inside must be important enough to warrant this amount of security, though it seems like overkill to Stiles.  

The drive through the base is sombre and quiet, with only a few men and women in lab coats wandering around.  It’s like a ghost town, that, or it’s just severely understaffed.

The cart grinds to a halt in front of a rather large building, one of the biggest in the complex.  It doesn’t bear any signs on the front, only a sterile looking metal door that’s been polished to within an inch of its life.

“Come on, team,”  Allison says, hopping out of the cart.  “Let’s go meet our charges.”  She swipes her hand terminal over the lock and the door clicks open with a pneumatic hiss.  Allison leads them through the white corridors, stopping in front of yet another sterile looking door.  It slides open to reveal a cold, white laboratory, surfaces covered in miles upon miles of stainless steel.  The only splash of colour comes from a woman whose strawberry blonde hair is tied into a neat bun, balanced on top of her head.

She turns around to face them, and the grim line of her mouth splits into a smile at the sight of Allison.  She holds a terminal in hand, but that’s not what catches Stiles’ attention.  Her hands are not made of flesh, but rather a greyish polymer that seems to ripple and move just as well as skin.  Stiles can’t see if the prosthetics extend beyond her wrist, since they are covered by a white lab coat, but they look expensive and high-tech.  If Stiles was ever in an accident, the navy would never pay to give him prosthetics like this.  They probably cost more than what he’d make in a decade.

“Team, this is Lydia Martin, the head researcher on the project,”  Allison says, sweeping her hand and stepping aside to allow the other woman to speak.

“Call me Lydia, during the next few months we are all going to get to know one another very well.”  Lydia smiles, tucking her terminal away as she offers her hand to shake each and every one of theirs.  The polymer is warm to the touch, the same temperature as human skin, and Stiles cannot help but marvel at the technology, as well as the woman it is attached to.

She walks further into the lab, encouraging the group to follow but not to touch anything.  Stiles looks around, feeling overwhelmed with everything he sees.  The labs on Luna base weren’t this advanced, everything was grimy and covered in a thin layer of rust.  The lab rats had to whack the equipment a few times to even get it to work.  This is no government facility.  This is a privately funded and run laboratory.  Considering the quality of Lydia’s prosthetics, he’s surprised he didn’t reach that conclusion earlier.  

“Who’s paying for all of this?”  Stiles eventually asks, eyes narrowed.  The bad feeling he had on the transport ship comes back in full force.  He may not fully trust his government, but the private sector has the potential to be worse.

“My employer would prefer to remain anonymous,”  Lydia explains, looking at Stiles with a glint in her eye, “But I can reassure you that the Earth government and my employer have the same goals.”  She turns to face the others, “As well as the Martians and the Belt, of course.  This is a joint research operation with all three governments, working together in harmony.”

“I don’t see why Earth and Mars have to get involved if the mission is in the Belt,” Reyes says, leaning against a counter, mouth downturned in displeasure, “No offense, Boyd.”

Boyd snorts.  “None taken.”  

Lydia smiles cordially at Reyes, but under the smile lies an acerbic sharpness.  “Like I said, this is a joint endeavour, everything else is on a need to know basis.  You will protect my scientists, keep order, and make executive decisions in times of crisis, but otherwise, you will stay back and let us do our jobs.  The politics of what we are doing is none of your concern.  There is no need for you to build bridges, nor is it necessary for you to burn them.  You will work together and you will help us see this job though.  Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal,”  Reyes says sullenly.  

“Very well, your barracks lie on the other side of the camp, Allison will take you there.  Don’t get too comfortable,”  she says, turning around and wordlessly dismissing them, “We leave Ceres in three days.”

***

It’s the night before they’re supposed to report to the docks and Stiles and Scott are sitting in a bar.  It was recommended by one of the base’s permanent officers as the cleanest in the sector, and by clean, he meant free of shady sorts, selling things they should not be selling.  In terms of actual cleanliness, it could use a bit of elbow grease.

He signals to the bartender and watches in fascination as the station’s spin gravity makes the whisky he ordered pour in a curve, rather than straight down.  When he was first stationed on Luna, it took him forever to get used to it, he spilt countless bottles of cheap whiskey when he was still trying to drink his problems away.  Well, he never did stop drinking his problems away, but he has gotten better at taking into account the coriolis effect in his less sober moments.  

Stiles palms his hand terminal and pays for the drink, sipping it slowly and enjoying the taste, considering it’s probably made of something grown in a lab.  Scott’s drink has a little umbrella in it, and Stiles smiles at the sight of him sipping through a curly straw.  Stiles used to love sugary drinks when he was a teenager, but he quickly grew out of them in training camp.  His old XO used to take them out for drinks on their days off, and the first time Stiles joined in, he ordered a pina colada, only for his fellow marines to tease him mercilessly.

Stiles purses his lips, tearing his mind away from the past.  There’s a reason he brought Scott out today, and it’s not just for the alcohol.  

“Something’s going on, and I don’t like whatever it is,”  Stiles whispers lowly to Scott.

Scott stops mid sip, looking at Stiles over his glass.  “What makes you think that?”

“What doesn’t?”  Stiles says with raised brows.  “I mean, c’mon.  A mysterious benefactor who refuses to reveal his name? Plus, the base is severely understaffed considering it’s also a government operation.  Something smells fishy, and I don’t like whatever it is.”

“Fishy?”  Scott asks, confused, and Stiles remembers that Earther colloquialisms and Martian ones often differ.

“I mean something’s wrong, Scotty.  I don’t like this one bit.”

“You should talk to Allison about it, want me to bring it up with her?”  Scott asks like he’s aching for a reason to talk to her, and humouring Stiles.  

Stiles sighs, shaking his head.  “Nevermind, buddy.”  He gets up from the barstool.  “I’m going to take a leak, be right back.”

Something is bothering him about this whole mission, but he can’t seem to put his finger on exactly what it is.  

Stiles is lost in his thoughts, walking out of the bathroom, when someone strides past him, clipping his shoulder.  Stiles stumbles, head hitting against the door jamb, making him see stars.  He blinks as the man who walked into him shouts for him to watch where he’s going, as if Stiles is the one at fault.  Stiles would reply, but the ringing in his head is not helping him form useful words.

Reyes slides out of the crowd, glaring at the man shouting at Stiles, a killer look in her eye.  “Fuck off, shithead, he’s with me.”  The man must know her, because he backs down immediately, slinking away with his tail tucked between his legs.  Reyes turns to Stiles, a smirk pulling her lips up in amusement.

“Damn, Earther, and this is one of the nicer bars.  Belters must not like the look of you.”  She reaches out and pokes at the mole at the corner of his mouth.  “So this is what Earthers call fancy breeding?  At least they could have gotten rid of all the spots.”  Stiles swats her hand away, but it only seems to stretch her smile wider.  “What? Don’t like all the prodding?  Hypocrite.  You Earthers like to do it to us.  Submerging us in tanks to see if you can fix us, as if we need any fixing.”

“I don’t know what you’re rambling on about, but it has nothing to do with me.”  Stiles folds his arms across his chest.

“Oh they don’t tell you about that, do they?  About your fellow Earthers’ experiments on us?”  Reyes trails her long index finger along Stiles’ hair line, inadvertently running along a scar he got from one of his ‘fellow’ Earthers beating the shit out of him for being different.  

All of Stiles’ patience disappears in a poof and he hisses sarcastically, “Don’t you know?  We Earthers are so fond of tanks, we grow all our babies in them.  We consider it an honor to be put in one, it’s like we’re swaddling you with love, returning you to the womb.”

Reyes drops her finger, eyes narrowing for a moment, before the tension breaks and she snorts.  “You’ve got cajones, pretty boy.  I like you.”

“I bet you say that to all the boys,”  Stiles drawls.

Reyes chuckles and swings an arm around his shoulders.  “Come have a drink with me, I’m buying.”  She steers him further into the crowd, and Stiles is forced to go along with her.  Scott catches sight of him and gives him two thumbs up.  Stiles blushes right to the tops of his ears, he’s so tempted to shout that it isn’t what Scott is thinking, but he imagines that would just give Reyes more material to tease him with.

She pushes him into a booth where Boyd and Lahey sit, tall glasses of dark Belter malt in hand.  Stiles doesn’t know how people stomach the stuff, it’s like drinking a glass of yeasty bread.  Lahey puts down his beer the moment he sees Stiles, a sour look on his face.  “Erica, really?”

Reyes shrugs.  “He’s cute.”

Boyd looks him up at down before shaking his head.  “Not my type.  If you want to sleep with him, fine.  Just don’t expect me to join in.”

Stiles chokes on his spit.  “I’m not sleeping with anyone at this table.”

Reyes pouts and rests her head on her hand, bracing her elbow on the table as she looks at him.  “Aw, and here I thought we were going to be such good friends.”

“You sleep with all of your friends?”

She grins.  “Only the pretty ones.”

“Gee, thanks,”  Stiles says sarcastically, rolling his eyes.  His posture is stiff, hands tucked in his lap.  He feels uncomfortable around these people, and can’t help but flinch when Reyes reaches out for him again.  She quirks a brow at his reaction.

Lahey sneers.  “What have you got to be scared about?  We’re just Belters.  Don’t Earthers look down on us?”

Stiles looks pointedly at Lahey’s holster.  “I’ve learned to fear any man with a gun strapped to his side who doesn’t like me.  Doesn’t matter where they’re from.”

Reyes tilts her head to the side.  “You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

Stiles shrugs.  “The first man who ever shot at me was in my own unit.  He thought I looked at him funny, and didn’t like that much.”  Lahey leans back, surprised at Stiles’ explanation, so he continues.  “He didn’t want my _kind_ near him.”

“Kind?  You’re an Earther.”

“And yet they still call me an alien.”  Stiles shakes his head.  “You can say what you want about Earthers, but don’t group me in among them, they like to fuck over their own just as well as Belters.”

Lahey stares at Stiles for one long moment before raising his hand and calling the barmaid over.  He points to Stiles, addressing her.  “Get this man whatever he wants.”

The barmaid looks at him expectantly, waiting.  Stiles thinks, before figuring _why not_.  “I wouldn’t mind a pina colada.”

Reyes nudges him in the side, grinning wildly.  “Make that two.”

Stiles smiles down at the table in happiness.  “I like the way you think, Reyes.”

“Please, call me Erica.”

***  

Asteroid BC-925 is a high albedo space rock, shiny and small, but composed of worthless minerals.  Only a few kilometers across, it would be all but useless, if it wasn’t for the distress signal emanating from it, loud and clear.

“What do you suppose we’ll find on that worthless pile of junk?”  Erica asks, standing beside him as they look out the porthole.  The asteroid is still a speck in the distance as they decelerate towards it.  They’ll reach it in only a few minutes.  Stiles has his magnetic boots on, ready for the ship to stop, and thrust gravity to kick the bucket.  As an Earther, he doesn’t much care for the feeling of weightlessness that comes along with a lack of gravity.  Erica seems to thrive on it.

“I honestly have no idea.”  Stiles says, just as the ship groans, engines grinding to a halt.  Stiles taps the heels of his mag boots, and they flare to life, anchoring him to the floor.  His hair must be growing out a bit because he feels it sweep his forehead, floating around in zero g.

“I guess we’ll find out then.”  Erica claps him on the shoulder, pulling away, and walking as fast as her mag boots allow to the shuttle docking area.

“I guess so,”  Stiles says under his breath, moving to join her.

The only non-military personnel waiting for them on the shuttle is Lydia.  Originally, Allison wanted trained professionals only scouting ahead for danger, but Lydia argued that it would be best to have someone along who actually knew what they were looking for.  Stiles can’t help but agree with her.  She’s the only one who has any idea about what’s going on.

Boyd sits in the pilot's seat, a look of intense concentration on his face as he goes over the screens, so Stiles leaves him be.  He slides up to Isaac.  After they had gotten drunk on pina coladas, they had gone for karaoke, and Stiles had scored higher than him on a Belter song, in Mandarin no less.  Isaac had grudgingly accepted him then.

Isaac’s hair looks even puffier than usual in zero g and Stiles is tempted to reach over and pat it, just to see what it would feel like.  He resists though, sure that Isaac would bite his fingers off if he tried.

“You ever been out in the vacuum?”  Isaac asks as they buckle themselves into the comfy shuttle seats.

“Once,”  Stiles says, shuddering at the memory.  Out of all the people on the ship, only Allison knows about the Deimos incident, and how he should have been promoted because of it, but wasn’t.     

“Then you’ve worn vacuum armour before.”

“Actually, no,”  Stiles says with a short, non humorous chuckle.  He can still feel what it was like—ears throbbing in agony, the open vacuum of space, the impossibly thin air, and fighting so hard, taking one step at a time to reach where he needed to go.  Knowing that he was sacrificing himself to save people who hated him.  

Isaac’s brows dip in confusion.  “Then how-”  Boyd chooses that opportune moment to kick the engines, starting the shuttle.  The words return down Isaac’s throat as he’s thrust back in his seat with the force of several gs.  Stiles turns away from him, closes his eyes, and waits.

After only a few minutes, the shuttle lands on the asteroid with a dull thump and Stiles cracks his eyes open again.  He’s the first out of his seat, mag boots clicking against the metal floor as he walks over to the weapon’s locker.  The Belters look like they’re still recovering from the thrust gravity, but Scott and Boyd seem to be doing alright.

The weapons they can use out in the vacuum of space are fairly limited.  All bullets are self propelled, because any recoil would send the shooter flying off into space with no air resistance to stop them.  When Allison recovers, she hands out the vacuum armour, and weapons according to what everyone is most comfortable carrying.  Stiles just hopes he won’t have to use the rifle Allison gives him, hoping that this is just a scouting mission.  

The short hairs rise on the back of Stiles' neck when he glances out the porthole and gets a real close look at the asteroid’s surface.  It’s covered in cable lines and electronics, too small and sparse to be seen from anywhere but the surface.  They flow towards a series of boulders and what appears to be a heavyweight airlock.  Someone built a base here and nobody knew about it.  Not Earth, not Mars, not the Belt.    

 _Yeah, ‘scouting mission,’ fat chance_.  

Stiles grips his rifle tighter.  

***

Static ripples in his suit helmet, the sound of Boyd and Erica’s heavy breathing as they cut through the thick airlock.  Sparks bounce along the surface, but it’s eerily quiet as sound doesn’t carry in a vacuum.  When they finally make it through the other side, Stiles watches as it decompresses, gasses escaping into space from whatever lies on the other side.  Lydia gasps in wonder, and Stiles can’t help but do the same, even if his gasp is a little more in foreboding.  

When they finish, Erica attaches a line around a pipe to the cut away airlock so it doesn’t float and damage the shuttle.  

They advance into the dark and Stiles helps set up heavy plastic sheeting, melting it to the walls around the hole to create an airlock seal.  The air pressure slowly rises again, and Stiles checks his vitals reader, revealing that the air around them is safe to breathe.  He leaves his helmet in place, better to be safe than sorry.

With his helmet’s light on, Stiles see they’re in a typical space station, resembling some of the smaller bases on Mars’ moons.  Nothing fancy like Luna or Ceres, where large groups of people can live self sustainably almost indefinitely, this is much smaller.  It’s crowded, but it’s functioning.

“I don’t recognize this technology,”  Lydia says across the coms, “It looks like it could possibly be from Earth, but I’m not sure.  It’s decades old at least.”

“There’s power enough for the atmosphere system to work, so it must have its own fusion core,”  Stiles remarks.  He approaches a wall terminal, a fine layer of dust covering it.  He finds an emergency power switch and flicks it on.  Code flies across a screen, faster than he can recognize.  “Lydia.”  Stiles catches her attention, stepping aside so she can reach the terminal.  She hems and haws over it, fingers flying over the older keypad.  Stiles walks further down the corridor.  His beam of light sweeping over the walls and floors.

“Ah ha!”  Lydia exclaims the moment the station groans and the lights flicker on, illuminating the corridors.  They appear to stretch on, disappearing in a curve.

“I’ve downloaded a map of the station to your suits’ terminals,”  Lydia says and Stiles brings it up.  Studying it, he finds many corridors, all feeding to a central chamber.  Which, according to the information Lydia pulled from the wall terminal, is under decompression.  Something must have breached the hull.

“We need to keep this escape route clear,”  Allison orders, “Head towards the central chamber, but if there’s any sign of trouble, we’re out of here.  I’m looking at you, Lydia.”

Lydia sighs heavily, “You’re no fun, Allison.”

Stiles keeps expecting something to jump out at them during the walk.  Why else would the atmosphere system still be functioning if they weren’t people still living?  It makes no sense, and it keeps Stiles on his toes, brain shutting down and training kicking in.  Their mag boots are the only sound to be heard, except for the hissing of the air recyclers.

The airlock to the central chamber is as thick as the one they had to cut through outside.  Boyd readies the saw.

“Prepare for decompression,”  Allison says as Boyd begins cutting.  They stand away as the seal breaks, all the air flooding from the room in a whoosh.  Stiles wavers on his feet from the force, but his mag boots keep him anchored.  Boyd lets the door go, and it drifts off, floating up towards the high ceiling where massive holes from what appears to be gauss rounds have breached the hull, exposing it to space.  They seal the hole behind them with plastic sheeting, saving all the oxygen from escaping.

“A ship fired their turrets on this station,”  Erica says.  She turns to Lydia, “I thought you said we were the first ones here.”

“I never said that.”  Lydia says shortly, walking forward into the room.  There are pods everywhere.  Most of them are damaged, shredded to bits and destroyed.  Scraps of metal, glass, and polymer coat the ground in wreckage.  Stiles walks over to a pod that looks only slightly damaged, the glass covering its front shattered and crunching beneath his feet.

He leans over, and nearly falls back on his ass at what he sees inside.

“Guys,”  Stiles says, voice wavering slightly, “There are people in the fucking pods.”

Allison freezes for a long moment before calling out orders, voice stuttering in horror.  There are _hundreds_ of pods in the room. “Check if any are operational, there may be survivors.”

Stiles turns away from the little girl he saw in the pod.  She could have died years ago, but she looks exactly the same as the moment her heart stopped beating, covered in a thin layer of frost, skin pale and lips blue in death.  He shakes his head and prays to every deity he knows of that they find at least _one_ intact pod.  Someone murdered these people knowingly, and if they find even one person still alive, they might know who did it.

Stiles rushes through the rows of pods, while his teammates do the same.  The breached pods have flashing red lights on their vitals panels, and Stiles searches for ones that don’t, but he can’t seem to find even one.  There’s so much death and devastation in this room, it chills him to the bone.

He reaches the end of the row where a large balcony shades a pod, Stiles crosses his fingers and approaches.  The green light he sees on the panel, nearly makes him jump for joy.  “I found one,”  He says, relief making his voice squeak.

“Let me see.”  Lydia pushes past him and examines the pod.  She brings up the terminal and keypad and works her magic while Stiles and his fellow marines stand by, holding their breath.  “Someone’s inside,”  she says, finally,  “And they’re alive.”

“Oh my god,”  Allison exhales.

“What can we do?”  Isaac asks, “It’s not like we can open it here, we’re in a vacuum.”

Lydia bites her lip and looks back down at the pod, polymer fingers running over the keypad again.  “It has a separate self-contained life support system that should last for a few hours if we unhook it and carry it back with us.”

Stiles looks at the pod, it’s made of lightweight material, and the six of them should be able to push it back to the shuttle, if Lydia directs them.  There’s no gravity holding it down, just a few bolts into the ground.

“Let’s do it.”  Allison decides.

It takes them a while to unhook the pod from the cables grounding it, but when the last bolt comes free, it nearly floats away in the zero g, until Erica nudges it, pushing it towards the door.  Stiles breaks the seal on the plastic, and they push the pod through, sealing it back behind them, giving the atmosphere system a workout.  They work in silence to float the pod through the corridors, being careful not to clip it on anything, extra aware of the delicate cargo contained within.

When they push the pod into the shuttle’s cargo bay—strapping it down so it doesn’t float away—the severity of what they saw inside that room, finally hits them.  Scott runs into the bathroom, and Stiles can’t blame him one bit for puking his guts out.  He feels like doing the exact same.

Stiles stares as Lydia fusses over the pod, and he can’t help but reach his own conclusions.  He pulls his helmet off and tosses it away, before turning to face her.

“Did you know about this?”  He asks, eyes narrowed.

She looks at him and scoffs.  “They must have been asleep for years before someone fired those turrets and activated the distress beacon.  I knew nothing about it, only that there was an unidentified signal coming from this asteroid that needed investigating.”

“Then why was your employer so interested?”  He hisses.  “Unless they were the ones who fired the turrets, and killed all those people, and now they’re back to make sure they finished the job.”

“What are you implying?”  

“You know exactly what I’m implying.”  He jabs a finger in her direction.  “Hundreds of civilians are dead, murdered in cold blood in their _sleep_.  What are you and your people going to do with that pod when you take it back to the ship, huh?  Space it the moment our backs are turned?  Erase all the evidence of your employer’s crime?”

“Stilinski!”  Allison shouts.

“I was hired to investigate unknown technology, not to murder people,”  Lydia says through clenched teeth, Stiles can almost hear the creak of her prosthetics as she squeezes her hands in anger.

“Your employer-”

“I don’t know who they are!”  Lydia yells, “I was contracted anonymously, paid anonymously, and every single interaction I’ve had with them has been through a proxy.”

Stiles’s tone softens somewhat at that.  Lydia doesn’t seem to know what’s going on herself.  “What was the deal they struck with our governments?”  He asks quietly.

Realization floods her eyes, widening them scarily.  Stiles holds his breath, knowing exactly what is coming.  “Full, unconditional access to anything and everything we find inside, no matter what it is.”

“So you’re saying,”  Erica starts, voice high as she turns to Lydia, “That for all intents and purposes, your employer _owns_ whomever is in that pod?”

Lydia swallows, her throat bobbing.  “I’m afraid so.”

“Well shit,”  Erica says.

***

Stiles sits in the cargo bay, leaning against the pod, while the others are up in the control centre, figuring out what to do.  He thumps his head against the side.  There’s a person inside.  A real, flesh and blood person.  People can’t belong to other people, and it baffles him that apparently with a few well placed words on a contract, they can.

 _Fuck that shit_.  Stiles decides.  “I’m not going to let anyone touch you.”  He promises.

It beeps and Stiles’ startles, scrambling to his feet.  The pod beeps again, and continues beeping.

“Shit.”  The pod hisses, the sound of pressurization, and Stiles approaches the front slowly, unsure of what to do.  

“Fuck!”  Stiles swears as he nearly gets bowed over by the force of the front flinging off, flying and slamming into the other side of the cargo bay.  An icy fog floats from the inside and Stiles stares in shock as a ghostly figure rises from its depths.  The fog clears to reveal a stocky man.  Water from melted ice, drips from his dark hair as he looks at Stiles in confusion, thick brows furrowed deeply, wearing a dark jumpsuit with the letters D.H. sewn onto the front.

How the fuck he’s standing after being frozen solid for what must be years, is beyond Stiles.  

The man climbs from the pod, flailing when he immediately begins floating, eyes wide in horror.  Stiles reaches out and quickly grabs him by the wrist, anchoring him.  The man looks at Stiles’ hand but doesn’t say a thing.  Stiles doesn’t know if he speaks English, so he raises a finger.  

 _Wait_.  Lightly, he pulls the man over to a grip on the pod, indicating for him to hold it.  Once the man is safely anchored, he rushes over to the gear locker and pulls a pair of socks and mag boots out, in what looks to be the man’s size.

When Stiles returns, he finds the man with wide eyes, whole body floating in zero g, anchored by the grip he’s holding onto for dear life.  Stiles chuckles lowly, hoping the man didn’t hear him, but apparently he did, seeing as he’s now glaring at Stiles.

“Sorry.”  He apologizes.

He puts the socks on the man’s bare feet **—** adorably hairy toes wiggling in his face—then slides the boots on after, noticing with some satisfaction that they fit him perfectly.  He takes both of the man’s feet, and claps the heels together, activating the magnetic fields.  Stiles pulls him down to the floor where the boots adhere firmly to the metal.  

The man’s body wiggles, and his knees buckle as he tries to stand, like a toddler in their first pair of mags.

“C’mon, it’s like you never used mag boots before.”

The man blinks at him, confused, his head tilted to the side.  His nose flares like he’s try to sniff the air, and he must like what he smells because his shoulders relax minutely.  Stiles looks at this adorably confused man and feels a surge of protective instincts so strong, they nearly knock him off his feet.  He’s never going to let anyone hurt this man, not even if it kills him.  

Stiles licks his dry lips and presses the call button on his wrist terminal.  “Guys, you need to get down here, stat.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: There are some minor bad touches at the end of the chapter.

Lydia shines a light into the man’s eye, and he honest-to-god growls, grumpily swatting her hand away.

“This is for your own damn good,”  Lydia hisses, “Hold still.”

The man makes a displeased face, turning to Stiles, eyes wide like a puppy, begging for his help.  Stiles raises his palms.  “You’re on your own, buddy.”  The man pouts.  

When Stiles had called the team to the cargo bay after the man had woken up, he expected him to freak out, being close to so many strangers.  Instead, he had seemed curious, sniffing at everyone present.  He made a face at Scott, as if he could still smell the residual puke on him.

Stiles doesn’t think he understands English, but he seems to comprehend basic body signals.  Stiles had beckoned him over with his finger, and he had come.  The man understands signals prevalent with English speakers, but he doesn’t understand the language itself.  It’s a puzzle Stiles is itching to solve.

Lydia sighs and gives up.  She picks up the diagnostics tool, running it over the man’s body, brow furrowed in concentration.

“Anything wrong with Dee?”  Erica asks, leaning casually against the med-bay door.

“Dee?”  Stiles asks.  Erica points to the man’s jumpsuit, the D.H. in plain sight.  

The lights flash green on the diagnostics tool and Lydia lets go of it, letting it float beside her as she leans back in her chair.  “I don’t suppose you’re willing to tell us your full name?”  The man tilts his head to the side, obviously confused.

“Let me try,”  Stiles says, pushing her away so the man’s full attention is on him.  He points to the centre of his chest.  “Stiles.”  

The man swallows and points to his own chest.  “Sti-les?”  He stutters, confused.  

Stiles shakes his head.  He takes the man’s hand and points his finger to Stiles’ chest, repeating, “Stiles.”  He then points to Lydia.  “Lydia.”  Then he points to Erica.  “Erica.”  He then takes the man’s finger and points it to his own chest, raises his brow and waits.

Something must resonate because his eyes widen and he smiles, saying, “Der-ek.”

Stiles grins, tilting his head to the side. “Derek?”

“Derek.”  The man repeats, head tilted down into his lap as he looks up at Stiles, shyly, from underneath his lashes.

Only a few minutes later, Lydia chases him out of the room, for distracting Derek away from his physical exam.  He leaves, albeit reluctantly, especially when Derek makes a face of such despair when Stiles gets up, reaching out as if to pull him back down again.  Stiles pats his hair softly, and leaves.  

Erica nudges him on his way out.  Throwing an arm over his shoulder, she whispers in his ear, “Seem’s like Derek’s imprinted on you like a baby alligator.”

“It’s duckling,”  Stiles corrects.

“Duckling, alligator, same difference.”

“Erica, if you had actually seen an alligator before, you’d know it really isn’t the same thing.”   _Although…_  Stiles ducks his head back into the med bay where Lydia is now tapping at Derek’s knee caps.  Derek’s leg inadvertently kicks forward and he stares down at it in surprise, like it betrayed him.  The reaction passes quickly though, and he looks up again to bare his teeth at her, just like an alligator.

“You may have a point,”  Stiles says grudgingly.  She smirks, pulling him along towards the galley.  They can only stay a few hours more on the asteroid, pretending to make sure everything is safe, before suspicions arise.  Lydia has been sending vague messages about what they’ve found—mentioning the bodies, but also the unsafe structural integrity of the building because of the holes in it.  She hasn’t mentioned anything about Derek.

Stiles slides into one of the metal seats in the galley, while Erica grabs something to snack on.

“We’re going to have to hide him,”  Stiles says, tracing one of the scratches on the table absently.  “We should space the pod, and say we found one missing.  They can reach their own conclusions after.”

Erica takes a bite of her protein bar.  “How are we supposed to hide Dee?  He’s not exactly compact.”

Stiles buries his head in his hands.  “I don’t know.  All I know is that we have to keep him far away from Lydia’s employer, they’re up to no good, I can tell.”

Erica tilts her head to the side, thinking.  “We can hide him on the ship, easy.  The problem is getting him off the shuttle and onto the ship without anyone noticing.”  

A warm body slides into the seat beside him, disregarding all proper decorums of personal space.  Derek.  He shifts so he’s pressed up along Stiles’s side, head resting on his shoulder.  Erica looks on in amusement while Stiles flushes red.  “Um, Derek?”

Derek just nuzzles closer, grumbling contently, as he sniffs the hair behind Stiles’ ear, nose trailing and sending a shiver down his spine.

“See,”  Erica says, amused, “What did I tell you?  Just like a baby alligator.”

Stiles silently glares at Erica before twisting in his seat to turn to Derek.  “Hey, buddy, what’s wrong?”  Derek whines.  “Are you hungry?”  Stiles asks, patting his belly, but Derek just whines more and snuggles closer.

“It appears he’s imprinted on you, Stiles.”  Lydia states, echoing Erica, as she walks into the galley, a terminal in hand, diagnostics running across the screen.

Stiles groans.  “Why does everyone keep saying that?”  Lydia quirks a brow at where Derek is now rubbing his face on Stiles’ cheek as he sits stiffly, unused to all the attention.  “I see your point.”

Lydia snorts.  Looking down at her terminal, she flips through the screens, brow furrowed in concentration.  “I can’t be entirely certain until I take him back to my lab for more tests, but I think Derek has some form of retrograde amnesia.  His language matrix is pretty much gone, except for a few select words, but his procedural memory is intact.  He is able to process human gestures perfectly.  Watch this,”  Lydia says, then proceeds to frown at Derek and flip him the bird with a polymer finger.  Derek shrinks in on himself pathetically, looking at her with sad, slightly watery eyes.

“Lydia!”  Stiles admonishes, wrapping an arm around Derek’s shoulder, tucking him even closer to his body, “Is that necessary?  He’s feeling vulnerable enough without your help.”  Derek tucks his face back into Stiles’ neck, hiding from Lydia and her false disapproval.

Lydia rolls her eyes.  “Stoke his hair, I want to see what happens when he gets your approval.”

“He is not a science experiment,”  Stiles argues,  “He’s a human being.”

“Actually, no, he’s not,”  Lydia says nonchalantly, like it isn’t weird for the very human shaped Derek to be something other than human.  Both Erica and Stiles gape at her.

“What?”  Stiles squeaks.

“He runs a temperature five degrees higher than normal, yet isn’t brain dead.  He growled at me, and his canines grew an inch.  Oh, and his eyes glowed red the second you left.  Whatever he is, he isn’t human.”

“Couldn’t that just be implants?”  Erica asks,  “Like when that that Earther soccer player got them to sharpen his instincts, causing a huge scandal?”    

Lydia shakes her head.  “Trust me, those canines are real.  There’s no growing bone like that in a lab.  Look here.”  She brings up an image of the inside of Derek’s mouth.  Pointing to his gums, she says,  “There’s room in his skull for the teeth, and the bone growth looks completely natural, not like any surgical modifications I’ve ever seen.”

“Okay,”  Stiles says weakly, rubbing Derek’s shoulder absent-mindly,  “So what the hell do we do now?”

“Like I said, we have to get him back to my lab on Ceres-”

“No.”  Stiles shakes his head definitely.  “There’s no way I’m letting you take him back to that fucking place.”  Derek snuffles worriedly at his tone, so Stiles speaks softer.  “It’s run by the guy who hired you, for fuck’s sake, Lydia.  The guy who thinks he _owns_ Derek.”

Lydia purses her lips, thinking.  “I know of a place on Ganymede station.  A medical facility run by a friend.  We could take him there.”

Stiles nods.  “First, we have to get him off this damned rock, somehow.”  

“But, Stiles, don’t you see?”  Lydia smiles deviously.  “That’s the easy part.”

***

“Easy, my ass.”  Stiles hisses as he unscrews a panel from the transport cart.  The screw floats off in zero g, but Derek grabs it, and helpfully hands it back to Stiles.  “Good boy.”  Stiles pats his head and Derek preens.  If he had a tail, Stiles has no doubt that it would be wagging.  Forget alligator, Derek’s more like a dog—cute as all heck, and always itching for scratches.

“Honestly, I don’t know how Lydia expects this to work,”  Stiles says to Derek, “I don’t know how you are with small spaces after spending so long in the pod.  If you freak out and make any noise, the gig will be up.”

Derek ignores his words, as always.  He stretches a finger out, gently tracing the zigzag group of moles Stiles knows sits at the corner of his mouth.  Derek’s brow furrows, and he worries his lip for a moment, almost like he’s trying to say something but doesn’t know how.

“You okay, buddy?”  Stiles asks.

“Cass-ee…”  Derek trails off.

“Noooo.”  Stiles frowns and points to himself.  “Stiles.”

“Cass-ee...”  Derek tries again, sounding frustrated.  “O-pee-ah,”  he says, jabbing Stiles in the cheek with a finger.

“Ow!”  Stiles exclaims, rubbing the bruise that’s sure to show up later.  “What the hell, Derek?”  Stiles says, unsure of what Derek’s trying to say.  Derek stares at him with wide eyes, looking properly chastised.  He runs his fingers apologetically along Stiles’ moles.  

“Cassiopeia,”  Derek repeats quietly.

Stiles stares at him, wide-eyed, as it clicks.  He feels the blood rising to his face, powerless to stop it as Derek looks at him so intensely, he feels stripped naked.  Derek just compared his moles—the moles that ruin his face, according to everyone he’s ever met—to a constellation of stars.

“Stiles,”  Derek says, his voice pleading, like he’s begging him to understand whatever he’s trying to communicate, “Cassiopeia.”  

Stiles licks his lips, actually blushing this time, when Derek’s eyes follow the movement.  “I got you the third time, buddy.”  Derek smiles, looking relieved.  

Stiles smirks.  Reaching out, he taps one of Derek’s canines.  “Sirius.”  He says, naming the Dog Star.  If Derek is as versed in astronomy as Stiles thinks he is, surely he’ll get the joke.  

And evidently, he does.  Derek’s canines descend a little from his gums, sharpening slightly.  He nips at Stiles playfully, capturing his index finger, and shaking it slightly before letting go.  

Stiles grins happily, scratching Derek lightly under the chin.  “You’re just a big softie, aren’t you?”

Derek purrs like a kitten.  

Turning back to his work, Stiles unscrews the final screw, letting the panel go for a moment as he sticks his head into the space revealed, turning on his flashlight.  He hums.  Derek might be able to fit if he squeezes, but Stiles won’t know unless he tries.  He turns to Derek, a grim smile on his face.  “Okay, so I’m going to need you to do something for me.  And I’m also going to need you to not freak out.”

In the end, the toughest part is fitting the panel back on again.  Derek climbs into the space with little protest, only a confused look as he goes where Stiles points.  He holds Stiles’ hand tight, and has to be pried off so Stiles can fetch the floating panel.  When Stiles places it over him, Derek taps on the metal a few times, questioning, and it makes Stiles feel like the most awful person ever.  Derek taps again, this time more frantically, but Stiles can’t have that.  This whole thing is counting on Derek being as silent as possible, and Stiles would prefer to not have to restrain him.

He lifts the panel again to find Derek nearly in tears.  He reaches his hands out for Stiles, begging to be allowed up, but Stiles shakes his head and softly combs Derek’s hair away from his face.  “I’m so sorry, but you have to be quiet, can you do that for me?”  

Derek grabs the collar of Stiles’ uniform and yanks him closer.  If he was in an environment with gravity, Stiles would have landed sprawled over Derek.  As it is, Stiles unravels Derek’s fingers from his clothing and presses him back into the space.  He lifts a single finger and presses it to his own lips.  “Shhh,”  he says softly, raising his brows at Derek, waiting.

Slowly Derek raises his own finger, echoing Stiles, and presses it to his lips.

Stiles smiles.  “There you go.”  Derek smiles back.  Stiles grabs the panel again and places it back over Derek, listening for a few long minutes, but no sounds come from within.  He sighs in relief, and rips the panel off the cart.  Derek lies still inside, his finger still placed against his lips and Stiles leans over, pressing a big, appreciative kiss to his forehead.

Stiles helps him out of the cart, knocking Derek’s heels together to turn his mag boots back on so he doesn’t float off, as he tends to do.  It’s like Derek keeps on forgetting there’s no acceleration gravity to keep him tethered.  It makes Stiles wonder if he even realizes they’re in space.  Stiles shakes his head, banishing those thoughts, it’ll just lead to a headache he doesn’t need.

Stiles pushes Derek to the side as he grabs a massive mallet from the tool box.  “You might want to stand aside for this.”  Stiles says, and brings the hammer hard down on the cart’s front thruster.  After a few more whacks, he steps back and studies the dent he left behind.  “There, does that look like we drove it into a rock by accident?”

In lieu of answering, Derek sticks his face into Stiles’ neck and sniffs.

***

The assistant engineer takes one long long at the busted cart, quirks a brow at Stiles as he sheepishly nudges it down the shuttle ramp, sighs, and lets him pass.  “Take it to the storage deck, we’ll fix it later.”  Stiles salutes him with one hand, while the other rests over the panel where Derek hides.

“I’ll help him.”  Erica offers.

“Best do so, or he might end up breaking the other thruster,”  the engineer grumbles.

“I resent that,”  Stiles mutters, pushing the cart towards the elevator.  He tries to act as innocuous as humanly possible with a cart the size of three of him floating around in zero g.  They only relax the moment the elevator doors shut behind them, and Stiles presses the button for the storage deck.  

Stiles unscrews the panel, the moment they are tucked away, hidden among the piles of junk decorating the storage deck, worried about what state he’ll find Derek in.  He sighs in relief when the panel opens to reveal a sleeping Derek, mouth slightly open in a silent snore.

“Huh,”  Erica says, “I never noticed his lil’ bunny teeth before.”

Stiles shakes his head fondly before gently touching Derek on the shoulder, waking him up.  They help Derek into an engineer’s jumpsuit and Stiles tries not to laugh when he sleepily steps into one leg but not the other and nearly falls on his face.  Okay, maybe Stiles laughs a little, but he stops the moment Derek turns to him with an adorable pout on his face.  He’s laughing on the _inside_.  

Stiles slips a pair of glasses on Derek’s face, sweeps his hair to the side, rubs some dust onto his skin, and there, instant engineer.

“Damn.”  Erica wolf whistles.

“Erica, please.”  Stiles chides, even though he secretly agrees.  Derek looks like every single engineer fantasy he’s ever had come alive, and it’s making Stiles feel a bit hot under the collar.

Derek lifts a hand to his face as if to rub off the dirt, but Stiles takes his hand instead and pulls him back to the elevator.  They decided that it would be best to hide him in Scott and Stiles’ room.  Scott will crash on Allison’s extra bunk, while Derek takes Scott’s bunk.  He’s comfortable around Stiles, and they don’t know how long they’ll be moored on BC-925, waiting for the science team to finish, so it’s important they keep Derek as calm as possible.

They manage to reach the crew quarters without incident.  Derek’s hand feels like a vice around his.  It’s obvious he’s nervous, being in such an unfamiliar place, but he takes it like a champ, and it makes Stiles so damn proud.  He rubs his thumb gently across Derek’s knuckles, and it gets him to loosen his clamp-like grip slightly.

The moment Erica locks the door behind them, Stiles collapses on his bunk with a loud groan.  “I have never been so nervous in my life,”  Stiles says, closing his eyes and rubbing at his forehead.  The stress is starting to get to him, and he feels a migraine coming on.  He used to get them on Luna all the time—a combination of spin gravity and the prejudice he was forced to put up with on a daily basis.  Stiles spent a lot of time internalizing his anger.  He never managed to find a healthy way to output the frustration, and it led to the worst kinds of stress migraines.

Derek whines and takes a seat beside him, reaching for Stiles’ head.  The moment his fingers connect to Stiles’ temple, the incoming pain seems to dissipate into nothing.

“Holy shit.”  Stiles opens his eyes at Erica’s curse to find Derek’s veins standing out, like black rivers crawling along his skin.  Stiles scrambles, reaching for Derek’s arm, he pulls it closer, fear making him panic.  However, the black disappears the moment Derek’s fingers fall from his temple.

“Did you do that?”  Stiles asks in wonder.  Derek stares intensely at Stiles in response.

“What was that?”  Erica asks.

Stiles lightly touches his forehead.  “I think he sucked my headache away.”

Erica’s brows climb to her hairline.  “Really?”  She reaches out and pinches Stiles, hard.  “Suck that, Dee.”

“Ow!”  Stiles exclaims, pulling away, and rubbing his arm.  Derek snorts in amusement and snuggles up to Stiles, not bothering to take the pain away.  “Rude,”  Stiles snuffs at him.  Derek chortles.

Someone knocks on the door, and Stiles near falls off the bed.  Erica peers out the eyehole.  Sighing in relief at what she sees, she opens the door.  Lydia walks in, mag boots clacking, a rather large, complicated looking machine in hand.  She places it on the desk.  Turning to face them, she taps the machine, her polymer fingers clacking on the metal.  “I’m going to scan his brain.  I won’t be able to do anything with what I find until we go to Ganymede, but at least we’ll know what is wrong, and if it might get worse.”

She makes Derek sit on the bed and has Stiles hold his head still.  She moves the wand attached to the machine around him, producing an image of the inside of Derek’s skull on the screen.  Derek wraps his arms around Stiles when she finishes.  Stiles hasn’t been touched this much since he was a little kid, and weirdly enough, he’s starting to get used to it.  He even thinks he’ll miss it if Derek ever decides to stop.  

Stiles watches Lydia, and sees the exact moment she freezes, her body stiffening.

“What is it?”  He questions, running a hand down Derek’s back.  Lydia shakes her head as if trying to convince herself of something.  “Lydia?”

“I can’t believe this,”  she whispers under her breath.  Moving her fingers over the screen, she transfers the image to the large terminal in the wall so everyone can see.  “Do you see this?”  She points to a small, dark shape on Derek’s brain.

Erica walks closer, frowning.  “What is it?”

“It’s a chip of some kind attached to the memory and emotional centers of his brain.”

Stiles whips around to face Derek.  Looking at the placid, happy smile on his face, he feels sick all of a sudden.  “Is that why he’s like this, why he can hardly speak?”

“I think so,”  Lydia says, “It must be making him docile.  All the people in the other pods must have been implanted with these too.”

“What the fuck is going on?”  Erica says.

“Whoever did this must have been building an army,”  Stiles breathes.  At the sceptic look on Erica’s face, he says, “No think about it.  Derek’s obviously got something going on for him, the sharp teeth, the pain sucking thing—which I will explain later,”  He says when Lydia opens her mouth.  “And now this.  They must have been building an army of slaves, for what goal, I don’t know, but whoever fired those turrets could have been a rival or a competitor, and those innocent people got caught in the crossfire.”  Stiles thinks of the first body he found, the girl’s.  She couldn’t have been a day older than twelve, and yet she was surgically implanted with a chip to make her a slave.

Derek touches his shoulder but Stiles shrugs him off—disgusted with himself for thinking Derek actually _wants_ to touch him, and hating the person who did this to Derek in the first place.

Lydia nods her head.  “I think you might be right, and I need to look into it further.”

“One of us has to stay with Derek at all times.”  Erica points out.  “He’s vulnerable and trusting, especially towards Stiles.”

“Yeah,”  Stiles says unenthused, “You’re right.”

Before they leave, Lydia grips Stiles’ arm.  “Just remember, that whatever the chip is doing to Derek, it’s not your fault.  It’s the fault of the person who cut him open and embedded it in his brain.  Don’t be hard on yourself if Derek is affectionate.  You’re the first person he saw when he woke up, if it had been anyone else, it would be them in your shoes.  Remember that.”

Stiles chuckles tiredly.  “I guess Erica really was right, he did imprint on me.  Just like a baby alligator.”

“Be careful of the teeth.”  Lydia smirks and closes the door, leaving him and Derek alone.

“Well, buddy, I hope you like low g soccer, it’s the only channel we get this far out.”

***

Stiles has to at least appear like he has a purpose, and in the end, that’s the trickiest feat of all.  The thing is, he would have one, if he was out on the asteroid, keeping people safe and doing his job.  Instead he’s stuck on the ship, keeping one person safe.  

But the rest of the crew don’t know that.  They seem to think he pissed off Allison—a popular Belter officer—and is getting punished for it.  To make matters worse, Allison has worked with the majority of the crew before, while Stiles is an outsider, an Earther and an unfamiliar face.  So, of course he gets shit for it.

Good thing he’s used to it.  

When Stiles was in training camp, he used to take all kinds of shit from his fellow trainees.  From petty things, like shaving foam in his boots, to more cruel pranks, things that could not be considered anything less than attempts to get him out of the picture, permanently.  From a rattler in his bunk, to dish soap on the floor of the shower stall.  Stiles took it all with a spoonful of sugar.  Meaning, he smiled and learned to keep his mouth shut.

The first time he spoke up about the harassment to his XO, the man did nothing but tell the offenders off, which only seemed to piss them off, and put Stiles in their bad books.  What was once harassment, built on the principle of the thing, turned into harassment because they didn’t like him.

So Stiles learned.  He laid still and he took it, anything people threw at him, because he knows doing anything else is begging for trouble.

He’s walking from the galley carrying food for Derek in his arms, humming a jaunty tune his mom used to sing for him, when two Belters he vaguely recognizes step up to him, boxing him in on either side.

Stiles’ mouth twists in displeasure.  He knows what’s coming and is already bracing himself for it.  He has to get back to Derek, that’s all that matters.  He knows if he fights them off, it’ll just complicate things for him.  Better to take what’s coming and be done with it.

The men corral him into a corner, tucked away from sight.  Unnecessary.  Stiles doesn’t think any passerbyers would stop them anyway.

The first punch always comes as a surprise, no matter how many times he gets beat up, no matter how many times Stiles knows it’s coming.  The second and third he drowns out.  He focuses on other things to distract himself from the pain.  It’s a good thing he wrapped up the food.  It’s floating around without him to hold onto it.  Stiles stares at a clear baggie full of dehydrated strawberries, and definitely does not think about how the men force him to the ground with their kicks and blows and their cruel words—Earther scum.  Filth.  Dirty crawler.  Alien.  They’re versions of words he’s heard a hundred times over.

They leave him curled in a fetal position, food meandering around in zero g, bouncing off his body.   _Five more minutes_ , Stiles thinks.  Five minutes more and then he’ll get up, straighten himself out, pick up the food, and return to Derek.

He takes four.

Stiles knows Derek smells the hurt on him the moment he walks through the door.  Thankfully, because he doesn’t come forward to drape himself over Stiles’ hurt body.  He stays some distance away, whining and sniffing sadly as he takes in Stiles’ ragged appearance.

Stiles gives him the food, and moves to strap himself into his bunk, intending to sleep off the hurt for the next few hours.  

He wakes to a tickling on his nose, and the feeling of something other than the straps holding him to the bunk.  Opening his eyes, he sees the unopened packet of strawberries floating near his face.  Stiles blows, and it drifts off, bouncing on the ceiling and heading somewhere else.  

Derek’s arm drapes over his waist.  Stiles’ uniform is unbuckled and open, tank pulled up to reveal his bruised abdomen.  He can’t feel any pain, and his head feels off, woozy, like he took too many pain pills.  The black veins on Derek’s skin stand out sharply, and Stiles sighs.  Closing his eyes, he drifts back to sleep.

***

Their final day on the asteroid dawns like any other.  Stiles unstraps himself from the bunk, peels Derek off his body, tunes into the security feed showing the black nothingness of space, and misses gravity something desperate.  Derek grumbles in his sleep, and rolls into the warmth Stiles left behind.  Stiles slips on his mag boots and attaches himself to the floor.

Stiles avoids the larger galley, and heads down to the small one tucked away on the promenade deck.  When the ship is close to dock, the crew usually occupies their time there.  The massive floor to ceiling observation portholes make for good viewing.  But when there’s nothing there to see but a countless number of stars, Stiles thinks it freaks them out.  There’s nothing more terrifying than knowing only a few layers of polymer stand between fragile bones and skin and the total vacuum of space.  

After what he had to go through in Deimos’ orbit, not much scares Stiles anymore.  The same cannot be said for the rest of the crew.

Only one person sits at the tables beside the porthole.  He’s an older man, hair grey and receded.  His back is turned to Stiles as he looks out the porthole, gazing into the depths of space.  Stiles has never seen him before.  

He grabs a protein shake from the cabinet, tucking another packet into his uniform pocket for Derek.  He’s just about to sneak out when the man speaks.

“Stilinski.  Come sit with me.”  The man gestures to the seat opposite him, and Stiles swallows.  Something’s not right with this man.  There’s a look in his cold eyes, a fissure in the movement of his body, the cruel twist of his mouth, that Stiles has only seen on one kind of person.

He remembers the case like it was yesterday.  

Someone was throwing people into airlocks and spacing them.  The Luna police were having difficulty finding the connection between the victims, and the murders went on for months.  It was only when the bodies started interfering with the docking of ships, that it became naval business.  

In the end, it turned out the police were looking in the wrong direction.  They couldn’t find a link between the victims, because there wasn’t one.  Instead they should have looked at the airlocks.  Some inconspicuous dock worker was randomly hauling anyone who passed by into airlocks with large observation portholes beside them.  The only reason they figured out his identity was because the navy decided to set up hidden cameras around the airlocks that fit his MO.

Stiles watched the video, and to this day, he will never forget the look in that man’s eye as he watched the woman he spaced suffocate.  The glee, the pleasure, but also the dead emptiness.  An emptiness that couldn’t be filled by anything but other people’s pain.  

It’s the same look in this man’s eyes.  He gazes at Stiles like he’s wondering what he would look like if he stuck him on the other side of the porthole.  If it would fill the empty spaces inside of him, or just make him crave more death and destruction.

“Gerard Argent,”  the man says, holding his hand out to shake Stiles’, “I’ve read so much about you.”

His hands are cold like ice, and Stiles quickly pulls back.  “I’ve never had the pleasure.  Any relation to Allison?”  He asks conversationally.

Argent smirks.  “She’s my granddaughter.”  Stiles looks over his clothes, they’re the uniform of someone important, someone with rank.  Stiles frowns, and Argent looks utterly unsurprised at his confusion.  “Didn’t Allison tell you?  I’m the CO for this mission.”

Stiles bites his bottom lip, his heart thumping.  He wondered why the CO never introduced himself.  Stiles thought it was because he feels too high and mighty to speak to those lesser than him.  Instead it’s something much worse.  Stiles gets the feeling that Argent likes watching from the shadows.  Waiting for the opportune moment to strike like a snake.  “No, she did not.”

“Well, I’d have to say that leaves you at quite the disadvantage, Stilinski.”  Argent smiles, baring his teeth.  “See, I know all about you.”  

“Oh?”  Stiles tries for confusion, if he plays dumb—the stupid marine with nothing important between his ears—he’ll fly under Argent's radar, and that’s exactly where he wants to be.

“Deimos was impressive.”  Argent taps a fingers against his chin as he looks at Stiles like he wants to eat him alive.  “To remain conscious for just over a minute in a vacuum, while your lungs were collapsing and the blood boiled in your veins, it must have been torture.”

“Just doing my job, sir,”  Stiles quips, trying not to think about the moment Argent is describing all too clearly.  The single worst minute of his life.

Argent shakes his head.  “No, your _job_ would have been to rush to a shuttle with the survivors, leaving the rest of the crew and the ship to be scuttled, but instead you blocked the hole that opened a whole deck to vacuum.  Without you the whole upper deck would have never reached the shuttles.  You saved the lives of hundreds of Earthers, but got nothing in return.”

“My hospitalization was provided for by Earth,”  Stiles says blandly.

“Ah yes, that was the least they could do to reward your heroism.  Too bad they didn’t end up paying for rehabilitation too.  I wonder, do you still find it hard to breathe?”

Stiles shuffles his feet uncomfortably.  “I’m sorry, sir, but is there a point to all of this?”

“What if I told you that I would be able break your contract with Earth.  The Belt could use resourceful people like you, and we’re much more appreciative of a job well done.  You’re too good of an officer to be kept behind on missions, sitting on your bunk and twiddling your thumbs.  You should be out and about, earning medals to decorate this awfully plain uniform.”  Argent reaches out and runs the flat of his hand over Stiles’ chest with more pressure than necessary.  It screams of bad touch, but Stiles knows Argent only did it to unsettle him, to make him feel uncomfortable.  This is all a game to him.

“That’s treason.”  Stiles shakes his head and steps away from Argent, letting his hand drop.

“You will work directly under me, I will keep you safe from _Earth_.”  He drags his eyes down Stiles’ body, lingering on his waist where his belt is untied and hanging loose.  Stiles feels exposed under that gaze, and he’s glad he at least zipped up his uniform.  “I won’t take my eyes off of you, not even for one moment.”   

“I’m sorry, sir,”  Stiles states firmly, hating that Argent is undressing Stiles with his eyes, purely for the joy of watching him squirm.  “I am happy where I am.”

Argent looks at him for one long moment.  “Very well.”

Stiles turns to leave, but he remembers something at the last moment.  He turns back to Argent.  “Sir, do you know when we are to return to Ceres?”

“Today, Stilinski.”  Argent smiles a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.  “ _Everything_ we need is already on the ship.”

When Stiles returns to his room, his hands won’t stop shaking.  He feels awful and torn to shreds, like Argent ripped into his mind and read his thoughts about Derek.  

He slams his fist on his desk, frustrated, waking Derek, who floats over to him with a worried noise.  Stiles pushes him away, shaking his head.  He can’t seem to shake the feeling that Argent _knows_.  That they’re only helping him by smuggling Derek out.  Like they’re playing right into his hands.

  



End file.
